A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.

But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence—full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon—transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.

With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.

The Sun Does ShineHow I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

by Anthony Ray Hinton

Would you have the capacity to forgive those who stole almost three decades of your life through hatred and ignorance? Anthony Ray Hinton was falsely convicted of two counts of murder in a travesty of justice in 1985. Subsequent appeals were further abortions in the courts. Why?

Anthony Ray Hinton was a young, poor black man, who had broken the law before so in the “wisdom” of the Alabama judicial system, he was sentenced to death by electrocution. Almost three decades of his life was spent on Death Row, in spite of compelling evidence that proved he could not have been the killer. Almost three decades of the life he could have had were lost forever, the children he could have fathered, the love he could have shared, any potential for contributing to society at large, gone. Who knows, maybe he would have fathered the child who grew up to cure cancer or who led the world to true peace?

What Mr. Hinton did was just as miraculous, he changed himself, he sought peace of mind, he sought knowledge and he brought people together in the name of hope and justice. He also found a man brave enough to say, I believe in you and I will fight for you when Attorney Bryan Stevenson took his case.

Today, Anthony Ray Hinton is a free man. Today he advocates justice and forgiveness and he believes in a God who never gave him more than he could bear. He has written of his grueling journey to freedom so the world will not forget what hatred and injustice are. He has written a book filled with undying hope through all that was lost. THE SUN DOES SHINE is compelling, riveting, shocking, appalling and simply astounding to realize that while we went on with our lives, someone should have to fight so desperately for their own.

A MUST read, no matter who you are, because once read, it will NOT be forgotten, or should this dark piece of human failings ever have to be repeated.